Saturday, November 10, 2007

Who'll Stop the Rain?

I hoped to get some nice pictures of Michie Stadium and the Corps of Cadets to illustrate this entry about last night's tournament of traditional gridiron skills between the Black Knights of the Hudson and the Scarlet Knights of the Raritan, but, as with the West Virginia game, I didn't feel like sacrificing my camera to the rain (and snow last night), so here's an appropriate picture taken before this season's USF game back in October.

It was obviously the Ray Rice show up at West Point last night with his school-record-breaking 243 yards and fifth game of 200+ yards. He now has 1,500 yards on the season with Pittsburgh and Louisville still to come.

But it was also at least partially the Jabu Lovelace show. He was the starting quarterback for every offensive touchdown in last night's 41-6 victory and he was in the game long enough -- between Mike Teel's 1st-quarter start and Chris Paul-Etienne's 4th-quarter mopping up -- to show a mix of play calls. Of course, given the weather conditions and the game situation, it was mostly a variety of rushing plays, but he even had one great long ball thrown to Tim Brown in the end zone that was only called back because Tim had placed a foot out of bounds on his dash down the sideline.

It was also a great defensive performance. The defense did not allow a single point or one sustained drive. The six points that Army put on the board were given to them via a sideline interception thrown by Mike Teel (quarterback rating 2.1 on 1 of 4 passing last night) in the first quarter. The coaches seriously need to think about finally giving Jabu Lovelace his first start next Saturday against Pitt. If Mike Teel's thumb isn't fully healed in the next week, they'd be stupid to do otherwise.

The most amazing statistic of last night's victory comes from the article about the game on ScarletKnights.com stating that this is the "...first road victory in the month of November since the 1998 season and the first of the Greg Schiano era." For long-time fans, one of the of the best things about the last three years is seeing these ugly monkeys falling from the back of the Knights.